Do You Know the Way to San Jose?
Jobs attracted people. Western states (1940–45) attracted about 7 million net new residents. The West’s urban population increase of 8,245,000 (1940s) was virtually identical to the region’s total population increase of 8,302,000; 13 of 15 western metropolitan areas and 43 of 49 metros in the South gained population compared to only 25 of the 74 metropolitan areas in the North (Abbott, 1981, p. 100). The pace of migration was intense and rapid. Between 1940 and November 1943, 28 of the West’s 32 metropolitan districts gained civilian residents. The West’s only losers were smaller “college cities” whose youth went off to war. The corresponding figure for the eastern metro areas was 53 gainers and 52 losers (Abbott, 1998, pp. 12–13). San Diego nearly doubled in population during the decade (92 percent), Seattle only grew by 45 percent, Denver 38 percent, but Phoenix by 78 percent. Los Angeles City grew an anemic 31 percent (sarcastic).
Between April 1940 and October 1941 San Diego recorded the nation’s highest population growth, 27 percent, with Wichita the second highest at 20 percent. Close behind were Long Beach, Corpus Christi and Wichita Falls. The largest absolute increases in population during the same months were 40,000 in Seattle, 50,000 in Washington DC and 150,000 in Los Angeles. Rates of population increase for the early 1940s ranged from 30 percent to 65 percent, and the annual population increment was between 16,000 and 20,000. The story was the same as in Mobile and Charleston, Fort Worth and Wichita, San Diego, Albuquerque, Seattle, San Francisco and smaller Sunbelt cities. Growth did not stop at war’s end.
Most wartime-relocated workers stayed after the war (Herman, 2012, pp. 259–60). Postwar Denver, for example, grew the most, gaining between 30,000 and 50,000 new residents each decade until the middle 1970s. Tourism, lifestyle and scientific research as well as associated high-tech manufacturing grew alongside the early federal government-related sectors. Much of this growth, such as the 1956 Martin Marietta Titan missile aerospace manufacturing facility in Littleton, located in the suburbs. There are literally a hundred set of postwar statistics and stories that could be told. Below is a mini description of Portland (OR) that conveys a sense of the housing/public housing issues and atmosphere that characterized western (and southern) war and postwar production.
Over the 1940s the City of Portland increased to 467,000 from a 1940 base of 305,000—a miserly 23 percent. The Portland metro, however, increased by 207,000 or 37 percent. Portland grew before the war even started because the prewar lend lease program to England/the USSR traveled through Vladivostok by way of Portland docks. Lend lease spurred Portland shipbuilding and aluminum reduction plants. Hometown boy Henry Kaiser quickly built three shipyards, creating jobs for 30,000 workers by 1941. By 1943 Portland shipyard workers totaled something in excess of 115,000. Early wartime migrants to Portland were young, male and unemployed. Despite their promising potential as the future “Greatest Generation” these fine fellows, left on their own as young workers, could often be found lying on the barroom floor. Growth is one thing, but rapid growth can be very painful indeed. Portland, hitherto a business-led community and conservative electorate, was overwhelmed by these young male workers. The mayor had to clamp down on the “Virginia City” boomtown conviviality that characterized some neighborhoods and downtown watering holes.
Where did Portland’s workers come from? A survey by the city’s Kaiser shipyards found that 5000 workers came from Idaho, 4000 from Montana, 3000 from North Dakota and 2000 each from South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois—all easily accessible with a ticket on the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific railroads. There were also 3000 New Yorkers and 1000 from Alabama “recruited by the company and transported on chartered railroad cars” (Abbott, 1998, pp. 14–17). Rapid population growth greatly affected the city’s character and lifestyle. The draft and severe worker shortages changed that atmosphere. By 1943 nearly one in four shipyard workers was female—Portland could easily have been the true home of “Rosie the Riveter.”4 In desperation, the city of Portland conducted a block-by-block survey/inspection to locate women available to work in the shipyards.
When the federal Housing Act was approved, Pacific Coast and Central Plains cities were in the first phases of the war production migration tsunami—rapidly escalating into a housing crisis. When they embraced slum clearance and public or defense housing, it was for different reasons/goals—in an entirely different policy context— than their eastern compatriots. Although, Portland felt intensive pressure from migration early on, local resistance to slum clearance and public housing attracted little sympathy in Portland’s more conservative politics. Despite intense pressure from New Deal housing officials to follow through on the 1937 Housing Act, in 1938 Portland voters rejected it by 32,000 to 18,000, creating a local housing authority. Only by the middle of 1940, with the shipyards in crisis, did the city council endorse approval (Abbott, 1981, p. 102). Mayor Earl Riley eventually bypassed the existing planning commission, forming his own housing authority which then proceeded to build shipyard-related worker housing—in Portland’s suburbs (story to follow below).
It’s easy to talk of war production migration, but wartime migration often exacted seriously negative effects on non-whites.
War time booms … emptied farm counties and small towns of their unemployed … Labor demands of defense plants triggered a “second” Great Migration of blacks from farm to city. New migration streams from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana to the cities of the West Coast were added to the established flow from the South East to the North … Competition for jobs and housing led to racial violence. (Abbott, 1987, p. 59)
Still, as late as 1950, the South retained 63 percent of the nation’s black population, while the entire West held less than 3 percent (570,000) (McDonald, 2008, p. 29). Compared to Los Angeles Portland was lucky. Los Angeles became a so-called melting pot containing black, Mexican and native white Okies and Arkies. The Mexican community doubled (to 400,000), and the city served as destination and a distribution point for 100,000 temporary Mexican workers under the Bracero Program (1942).5 The 1943 “Zoot Suit” riots devastated several neighborhoods. Riots that occurred in eastern cities, such as Detroit, were replicated in western cities as well (Omaha). Los Angeles, home to the majority of Japanese-Americans, imprisoned them in internment camps during the war. Japanese internment allowed others to take advantage of their old housing, jobs and businesses.
Postwar Industrial Decentralization: “The Gift that Keeps on Giving”
After 1947 war was “the gift that keeps on giving” as the Cold War, the Korean War, Vietnam and eventually a “permanent” war ensued. At WWII’s end there was too much existing “war-related” capacity, given demobilization. Facilities, airfields in particular, and factories closed down/downshifted across the nation; reconversion to peacetime production and all sorts of disruption occurred throughout 1946. In such an environment the military–chamber–metro–fortress ED nexus switched gears (did the reader really believe it would “fade away”?). Iron triangles refocused on preserving/securing the firm’s position within the local economic base. Industrial decentralization acquired a new meaning and context.
There was a regional bias in war production consolidation/reconversion. Much of the eastern industrial base could be converted back to consumer durable goods (cars and refrigerators). Old facilities, located in central cities, were particularly vulnerable. Technology, production efficiencies, transportation logistics and global markets meant older facilities were candidates for closedown. Regional and municipal alliances congealed into informal congressional voting blocs seeking to require military reinvestment/production contracts for these vulnerable factories. At the same time communities/states, generally in the West and “New South,” underwent a new “round” of military-related industrial decentralization and military contracts.
While many in the eastern Policy World were duking it out over future Housing Acts, a donnybrook within Congress over municipal war factory shutdowns and new military contracts erupted through 1954. Western and southern local/state EDOs were deeply involved in that struggle. Thus the battle lines in the decade following war’s end was between “haves” and “have-nots.” The “rump” regional alliances that characterized postwar industrial decentralization debate overlapped the IRB “shadow war” discussed in the last chapter—and the negative reaction to the “selling of the South.” Industrial decentralization, and now consolidation, became yet one more regional division, drifting toward the mid/late 1970s’ Second War between the States.
The military played a major role in this struggle. Their most pressing issue was to support newer weapons systems (aircraft and shipyards) that were concentrated in a few cities.6 The military’s postwar industrial decentralization debate centered on the threat caused by the concentration of production in a few large cities. Concentration meant war production was vulnerable to bomber, and now nuclear, attack. Nuclear bombs supposedly created a “crater” ranging between 3 and 10 miles. Between 1950 and 1954 that vulnerability increased with the arrival of nuclear missiles, bigger payloads, nuclear submarines and jets that could cross the North Pole and reach places never before accessible. Laugh, ignore and “harrumph” as one might, nuclear war was perceived as a very real threat well into the early 1980s—it became arguably the dominant issue of the era. Economic development now played in the shadows of another policy area. National interest seemingly dictated that have-nots be favored by building new facilities, if not closing down older existing haves’ facilities. The federal government, once again, was monkeying with local economic bases and infrastructure.
The battle first erupted in 1948 when defense officials pressured Boeing into producing a B-36 bomber in Wichita rather than Seattle. Military officials wanted a “defense in depth,” which meant relocation into the nation’s interior. Shortly after, military officials prized Chance-Vought from Connecticut to Dallas (the story of that, and the Dallas Chamber’s role was told in the last chapter); Consolidated Aircraft’s B-36 production was moved from San Diego to Fort Worth; a new GE “turbojet” engine plant was authorized to be built in Kansas City; and plans were announced to move Lockheed Aircraft from Burbank to Tulsa (Lotchin, 1993, pp. 50–51). Each of these facilities involved thousands of workers, a huge supplier network and logistics implications. ED’s metro–military nexus shifted into high gear: led initially by Seattle, in early 1949 they struck back. Seattle’s chamber, city hall and congressional delegation advocated a military policy that dispersed facilities/factories within the same metro area rather than decentralizing it away to a have-not metro. That’s when the 3-mile versus 10-mile bomb crater became relevant. The decision-making battleground was the no doubt well-known National Security Resources Board (NSRB).
Los Angeles formed its equally well-known EDO, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area Industrial Dispersion Committee, and the San Francisco-based, newly formed Bay Area Council joined with it in presenting their two cents worth to Congress and the NSRB. Fifty-two metropolitan areas formed similar industrial dispersion committees by the end of 1952 (Lotchin, 1993, p. 52). The pressure these metro EDOs exerted on both the military and Congress forged a formal dispersion policy (August 1951) that adopted the 10-mile crater metric; but the many exceptions and loopholes this created— requiring that each potential relocating plant had to seek approval from its local industrial dispersion committee, and providing accelerated tax write-offs and allowing local/state tax incentives—meant that in practical life the “haves” won.
Not to worry—the Korean War started in 1950. In the midst of the Korean War, the Truman administration, like FDR in 1940, wanted production fast and cheap— relocation and new facilities meant time and expense. Of the $8 billion new plant or plant expansion contracts released under Truman’s administration, most went to the haves. Truman’s plan favored sites around Detroit, New York, Pittsburgh and San Francisco. (Most of these facilities were built or expanded in suburbs, not central cities) (Lotchin, 1993, p. 52). Meanwhile, back at the Defense Department, the military were quite frustrated with their inability to achieve geographic dispersal to the have-nots. The have-nots were deeply infuriated.
We’re not done. Between July 1951 and midsummer 1956 two congressional committees thrashed out amendments to the 1950 Defense Production Act that would have fixed in stone a clear winner in our postwar industrial decentralization affair. The debate again seemingly ignored regional boundaries and followed the “have/have-not” distinction. When the Office of Defense Mobilization (ODM) in January 1956 issued guidelines based on the principle of geographic as opposed to metropolitan decentralization, have-not Senators and Congressmen sprang into battle to support the ODM and bring to an end the ad hoc policy favoring the haves.
Senators Fulbright (Alabama) and Carl Mundt (South Dakota), attacking the haves, loudly proclaimed the dangers of nuclear vulnerability, but also decried that previous policy/legislation “pretty well ignored the locating of defense fabricating plants” in the middle West (central states). California’s Senators countered that such extra-regional dispersal involved nothing less than expensive “socialist planning” and would entail increased expenditure for local governments for infrastructure, streets and utilities. Connecticut’s Senator Horace Seely Brown argued that regional dispersal would “result in the denial of defense production contracts not only to our firms in Connecticut, but throughout New England.” Congressman Edward Boland noted Springfield Massachusetts’s opposition, as did Michigan’s Gerald Ford. Los Angeles Congressman McDonough argued that “Dispersal would disrupt the economy of all the large industrial areas of the Nation. Moving a plant out of St Louis to a weed patch somewhere is no solution.” Finally, the great state of Rhode Island chipped in:
We in Rhode Island … know intimately the burden inflicted by the flight of the textile industry to mills in the South, and the movement … of machinery-manufacturing to the Middle West. Decentralization would deal a death blow to the hopes and aspirations of many of our Rhode Island communities which are so desperately striving to pull themselves up virtually by their own bootstraps. (Lotchin, 1993, pp. 55–8)
I couldn’t have said it better. The vote for geographic, extra-region (have-nots) industrial decentralization came in June 1956. It won by 64–19 (Senate) and 210–207 (House). The have-nots overturned the industrial defense policy.
As Lotchin concluded, “the geography of the vote revealed its sectional biases.” Washington State and California stood with New England and the Great Lakes industrial belt on the losing side; they could not hold Pennsylvania and New York or midwest non-urban districts. Representatives of the South and West voted 75 percent in favor of geographic dispersal. From that point on, military contracts for new facilities and weapons through the 1960s went to “have-nots” in the South and West. An example of how a western city, Colorado Springs, took advantage of this stands out.
Colorado Springs
Ninety miles south of Denver, Colorado Springs’s 1940 population of 37,500 suggested a none-too-prosperous western second/third-tier city. Its economic base, poorly connected to the rest of the nation, rested on extraction/mining and health-based tourism. War offered the city and its business leaders an opportunity to diversify the local economy—by attracting government investment. The chamber and affluent local businessmen raised funds, assembled a 35,000-acre parcel, formed a Chamber Military Affairs Committee and sent a delegation to Washington to lobby for military facilities. They were successful, gaining two bases—Camp Carson (30,000 troops) and a small army air base. Together they injected an estimated $5 million per month into the local economy (Gray and Markusen, 1999, pp. 313–15).
At war’s end, the chamber confronted the issue of if, and how, the local economy could be sustained—if not expanded. As the Cold War degenerated into the Korean “hot” war an opportunity opened up to continue the government’s investment strategy—which the chamber did. Again, successes followed from local initiatives. Not only were the two World War II assets expanded, but two new military-related assets were also acquired—and they were plums. The Air Defense Command (a “hole in a mountain” in which the nation’s defense command center operates) and the Air Force Academy both settled in Colorado Springs. There was intense competition for the Air Force Academy among other cities, but the Colorado Springs congressional delegation was strategically placed.
In 1949 the Secretary of Defense formed a committee on “a general system of education for the Army, Navy and Air Force’; its co-chairs were the presidents of Columbia University (Dwight Eisenhower) and the University of Colorado (Robert Steams); In 1954, when the location was decided, both branches of Congress were Republican—the chair of the Senate Conference Committee was Colorado’s Robert Millikin (also chair of the Finance Committee). Chair of the House’s Committee on Science and Aeronautics (space program) was Colorado Republican John Chenoweth. So, by 1986, an estimated 61,000 people (non-military) were employed at various
Colorado Springs military assets. Equally important, several defense-related industries established a meaningful presence in the area (Loral, GTE, Government Systems, Litton, Martin Marietta and TRW Defense). The city’s population increased by 54 percent in the 1950s, 92 percent during the 1960s and 59 percent during the 1970s, reaching 215,000 in 1980. A major reason for success, Gray and Markusen assert, was the chamber, which cultivated, on a personal basis, relevant military decision-makers— using a recreation spa in which generals and even President Eisenhower bathed, and developing an image of the area’s “military friendliness”: “We have one of the most outstanding military-civilian relationships in the nation” (Gray and Markusen, 1999, pp. 315–16).
Ron W. Coan 